


More things in Heaven

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: Anne Walsh's Dangerverse, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (two times over), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dangerverse, F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, The Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 10:35:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3647106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...and Earth, Horatio,<br/>Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;<br/>Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,<br/>How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,<br/>As I perchance hereafter shall think meet<br/>To put an antic disposition on,<br/>That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,<br/>With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,<br/>Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,<br/>As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'<br/>Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'<br/>Or such ambiguous giving out, to note<br/>That you know aught of me: this not to do,<br/>So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear."</p>
<p>(Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)</p>
            </blockquote>





	More things in Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnneBWalsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneBWalsh/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Living With Danger](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/106545) by AnneBWalsh. 



The Aurors came to the house of the Malfoys, for Lucius had called them. They found him gagged and bound with his wife sitting calmly beside him.

"I confess," she said simply.

(An empty vial gave her strength.)

Later, in the cells of the Ministry, her sister came and went, mere minutes before she felt her death whisper lowly in her ears. Narcissa Malfoy sighed, laid back on the cot, and closed her eyes.

She was not awake to see a woman and a man emerge from invisibility at the flick of a wand, to hear a dark-skinned hand put a stolen key in a lock and swing the cell door open, to feel that hand touch her forehead and mutter a curse, strong, strange arms circle her and lift her up, the tug of Apparition take her away.

She was not awake when a woman who shared her name labored over her tirelessly, through the night, to undo the pain of her own making. She felt, perhaps, on some level, a strange blue come over her and leave her clean and new.

Narcissa Malfoy died.

Narcissa Black awoke.

 

There was a presence beside her. Long years of paranoia had given Narcissa a nigh-preternatural awareness of when the eyes of others were on her, and someone watched her now. Exhausted as she had never been, she opened her eyes and let her head fall to the side. A pair of curious blue eyes in a small, round face greeted her.

"Who are you?" a very young voice said, curious and blunt in equal measure.

Narcissa smiled. There was something endearing about how careful the child was to pronounce the words properly, even while being rude in the way she supposed all children were. Children like...like her Draco. Her smile fell.

"Who are you?" Narcissa said softly, raising an eyebrow slightly.

The little girl's eyes narrowed, and impatiently she brushed her brown, curly hair from her eyes. "I Neenie," she said.

"And I am Narcissa," the woman replied.

The girl, Neenie, huffed and gave her an approximating look, as calculating as any little Slytherin. A quick scuffle was all that alerted Narcissa before another child's head popped up beside Neenie's. The one was tousled, black-haired - and to any member of the wizarding world, almost instantly recognizable by the scar on his forehead.

Harry Potter.

Ah. The poison. She was alive. She was with the Pack.

These facts did not, as someone else might have said, compute.

A dark woman, who was slender and elegant as any pureblood lady might hope to be - Aletha Freeman-Black, the Muggle-born wife of Sirius Black - stepped into view. “Let’s leave Mrs. Malfoy alone, cubs,” she scolded sternly in a voice that felt distant to Narcissa’s ears. “She’s had a rough night.”

When the cubs were gone, Aletha sat down in an unseen chair beside Narcissa’s bed and took her hand. Narcissa watched as blue light glimmered around the woman's dark fingers, playing over her skin and sinking eventually into Narcissa’s own pale hand.

“We saved your life,” the healer said eventually, “because you did something very kind for us. It wasn’t right, we decided, to let you rot in Azkaban.” The vitriol on the last three words was as sincere as it was unmistakable. “No sane creature deserves that,” she murmured to herself as afterthought.

“I...” Narcissa had no words. “...thank you,” she whispered. “You are wrong. But thank you.”

Aletha said, “You’re welcome.”

 

When Narcissa was well enough, Aletha left. In her place, Remus Lupin and his wife - Danger, was it? - entered the room and stood at the side of Narcissa’s bed. Narcissa had stood before the Dark Lord himself, Dumbledore, the Minister (at a time when the title was not such a joke, too), and been unafraid and unintimidated, only contemptuous in a dignified way. When the two Lupins fixed their eyes on her, she found she could not hold their gazes. Narcissa dropped her eyes and ran her fingers over the fine colors of the bedspread.

“I was with Aletha when we came to get you,” Remus said eventually. “We transfigured a simulacrum of you, a dead one. As far as much of the wizarding world is concerned - all of it but us - you, Narcissa Malfoy, are thoroughly dead.”

“Thank you,” Narcissa said quietly.

“What we would like to know,” Remus said in a tone that brooked no nonsense, “is what you plan to do now.”

Narcissa found she could glance at them, at least, even if she didn’t hold their eyes. “What would you have me do?” she said carefully.

“Stay,” Danger said abruptly. “We would have you stay.”

And so Narcissa stayed.

 

On the fifth of June in 1984, Kelly and John White’s household grew by two. Kelly’s sister Cecilia Gray had just been in a car accident - the same one, of course, in which she lost her husband - and after the trauma of it all, she and her young son Reggie had come to stay while Cecilia healed from her injuries.

The neighbors clucked and said what kind folk they were, that White couple, taking in that poor woman and her son like that.

 

“Are you part’a the Pack, now?” Harry Potter, age just-barely-more-than-4, asked Narcissa as he gazed up at her unabashedly.

“I suppose that I am,” she said slowly, still trying to parse the idea herself.

Harry, after a moment of charmingly obvious confusion, smiled brilliantly, his green eyes crinkling at the corners. Without further ado, he nodded firmly, put out his hands and quick as you please scrambled up into Narcissa’s blanket-covered lap, making the rocking chair shake as he shifted until he found a good spot. “‘kay,” he said nonchalantly, leaning back against her. Shock made Narcissa’s thoughts scatter; it was only natural to put her arms around the small boy-cub, just her own son’s size. Harry craned his head back and grinned up at her, quick but stunningly adorable all the same. “You part’a the Pack now,” he said adroitly, looking at some little bit of string he was playing with now, “That means you a Pack-mother, like Danger ‘n Letha.” Narcissa hardly knew what to say to this, let alone how to react to a young boy unexpectedly adopting her as his mother. (One of many, but the sentiment remained.) A sharp, confusing warmth bloomed in her chest anyway. Harry didn’t mind her silence; he glanced up again a moment later, his look faded into contemplation. “What I call you?”

“What you...?” Narcissa frowned in bewilderment.

“He’s asking what name you want him to call you,” a voice said unexpectedly. Narcissa jumped and looked up to see Danger leaning against the archway into the main room, a fond smile on her face. “Since none of the cubs are really our flesh-and-blood children - well, except Megan with Sirius and Aletha, and now you and Draco - they don’t call us Mum and Dad,” Danger explained. “We go by nicknames - Remus is Moony, Sirius is Padfoot, Aletha is simply Letha...”

“I see,” Narcissa said, still reeling somewhat.

“Did you...have any nicknames?” Danger smiled, head tilted curiously. “From friends, or siblings, perhaps…?”

“My sister,” Narcissa said, “Once called me Narcy. My parents said Cissy, on occasion...”

Harry wrinkled his nose, then made a disparaging noise and shook his head briskly, looking not unlike a puppy shaking water out of his ears. Danger laughed, a bright free sound like bells, and Narcissa couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Well, if that doesn’t suit your tastes...” Danger said, her eyes twinkling. “Remus and Sirius - as well as James Potter, that whole lot - got their nicknames from their Animagus forms; did you ever learn what your Animagus form would be?”

Narcissa schooled her face into impassivity. Carefully, she picked Harry up off her lap and set him on the ground beside the rocking chair, before standing slowly. “I can do better than that,” she said calmly. Then, where Narcissa had stood, was a sleek snow leopard with pale, intelligent eyes.

Harry, who had been pouting woundedly from being put aside, shrieked with delighted laughter. “Cat!” he crooned in delight. The boy pounced at the great cat, who dodged to the side before he could impact - he tumbled to the ground at her feet instead - but placed a restraining paw on him where he landed. Danger laughed as well. She folded her arms and leaned back against the door frame. Her eyes shone at the trick. “A snow leopard,” she said in approving wonder. “It suits you!”

“Snowcat!” Harry giggled, patting the thick, fluffy fur of the paw pinning him down. Drawn by the commotion, Hermione peeked around Danger’s legs with wide eyes. Sirius rounded the corner a moment later, Megan in his arms and Draco at his heels.

“What this?” Draco gaped, stopping dead in the hall.

“Greeneyes, what this?” Neenie chimed in. Narcissa had lifted her paw and Harry was batting at it like an excitable puppy, yelping with giggles every time Narcissa tentatively batted at him back.

“Snowcat, snowcat!” Harry gasped through his laughing.  "Pack-mother’s a snowcat!”

Neenie’s eyes lit up. “Snowmother?” Neenie asked. She tipped her head up to look at Danger inquisitively. “We gotta Snowmother?” she demanded.

Danger grinned and nodded. “You certainly do,” she said. That was all the invitation Hermione needed, it seemed, because she grabbed Draco’s hand and tugged him forward eagerly to pet their newest Pack-mother, who submitted to the attention with wary grace.

Sirius, meanwhile, was doing a double take or ten. "Is that-?" he asked Danger, who nodded mischievously.

The snow leopard carefully extricated herself from the toddlers around her and stood up, becoming Narcissa once more. “The social circuit can only hold one’s attention for so long,” she said, almost apologetically.

The laughter is everything she could have wanted.

 

She is home.

 

(“State your full names for the record,” Albus Dumbledore says politely.)

 

(“Gertrude Kelly Granger-Lupin.” “Remus John Lupin.” “Aletha Carina Freeman-Black.” “Sirius Valentine Black.”

She raises her head high with pride.

 

“Narcissa Cecilia Black.”)

 

 


End file.
